jueves, 11 de julio de 2013

¡Bebé compra auto con el smartphone de su papi!Last month Sorella Stoute from Portland, Oregon, purchased a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite on eBay. Now, this might not sound like much of a story, until you learn that Sorella is only 14 months old. Here's what happened. The tiny online shopper was playing with her father Paul Stoute's smartphone when she inadvertently opened the eBay app and purchased the rundown car for a little over $200 from a seller in nearby Tualatin, Oregon.

Sorella's dad first learned of the purchase of the car, nicknamed "Franken Sprite," via an eBay confirmation email. At first he was shocked and panicked but in the end decided to keep the car and fix it up, saying, "I've done a lot of bodywork in the past … but this is another realm altogether." Stoute added that he felt lucky Sorella picked a car on the cheaper end of the spectrum, saying he was glad she didn't click on the $38,000 Porsche he had also been looking at.

Paul Stoute set up a Smarty Pig crowdfunding page to raise money to restore the Franken Sprite, and he does not need to worry about Sorella's next purchase; he installed facial recognition technology and a new PIN code on his phone. He said he might give the fixed-up ride to Sorella for her 16th birthday or graduation.

Proponents of wind, solar, and other sources of clean energy may not be too happy. Not only is there the question of Russia's less-than-stellar record of nuclear waste disposal, there is also the fact that the floating power plants are being designed to power offshore oil-drilling platforms in the Arctic, according to RT.

Still, the barges themselves don't seem to be any more dangerous than Russia's nuclear-powered ice-breaker ships, which use the same KLT-40 naval propulsion reactors. The reactor-equipped barges would hold 69 people, and would have to be towed to their locations. They would also be able to power 200,000 homes, and could be modified to desalinate 240,000 cubic meters of water per day.

Each barge's set of two KLT-40 reactors would produce 70 megawatts of electricity — nothing to laugh at, butfar less than the 3,937 megawatts produced at America's largest nuclear power plant in Palo Verde, Ariz. Russia's Rosenergoatom, the state-owned builder of the floating power plants, says it will keep the enrichment levels far below the weapons-grade threshold established by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Of course, no nuclear reactor is completely safe. Back in 2010, when a prototype was tested near St. Petersburg, experts fretted to TIME about whether the shipbuilder would skimp on containment structures and auxiliary safety systems.

There is also the concern that terrorists could seize one of the boats — either in Russia or in the territory of a proposed customer like China or Indonesia — and either steal radioactive material or blow up the reactor.

Still, those risks are already present in ships that exist today. Indeed, environmentalists may be more concerned about the floating nuclear power plants opening up the Arctic — home to 13 percent of the world'suntapped oil reserves — to increasingly aggressive drilling operations.

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